Good Morning, Midnight

Jean Rhys

Memoir of a Russian Punk

Edward Limonov

It's Me- Eddie: A Fictional Memoir

Eduard Limonov

Invitation to a Beheading

Vladimir Nabokov

The Dead Girls

Jorge Ibarguengoitia

The Time of the Hero

Mario Vargos Llosa

liked it alot. i liked the different writing styles, in different sections, the stories of the young men before they entered the acadamy, in plain story style, the dialogue sections all muddled up when they are engaged in some, usually dubious activity, with no clarity as to whose speaking, and the clearer stories of the different people with their acadamy storylines, and clear dialogue, their cartoon characters to fit with their nicknames. At the start i assumed they were older, in the army, looking back to their teen lives before but then it becomes clearer, they are still only teenagers, the distant past is only a few months previous.
The characters blur, its hard to distinguish which nickname in the squad corresponds to which 'before' storyline. but that doesn't matter, they are all so similar, and anyway they are all in this acadamy now which is it's own world, with its own rules and extreme hierarchy within the official and unofficial structure. The cadets battle with the oppositional rules of the acadamy and within their social structure, the high up officials do the same. It all comes to a head when the unofficial rules break out into the open.

There are no heros.